


Snap Happy

by ElapsedSpiral



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Bromance, Childhood, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Male Friendship, Photography, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-22
Updated: 2012-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 03:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElapsedSpiral/pseuds/ElapsedSpiral
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Warnings: A bit of crude language. Warning for the boys being boys - I even made Sherlock a bit blokey somehow so perhaps be aware of OOCiness too (in my defence they have a giggle fit so it's all fair game).</p><p>Summary: De-anon'ing from the kink meme, prompt was for John to stumble upon an album of photos of Sherlock as a child, never smiling. John decides to rectify this by taking some snaps himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snap Happy

The album’s presence hadn’t been obvious at first and that really came as no surprise. Sherlock’s system, after all, when it came to filling bookcases focused more upon cramming every square centimetre to capacity than upon logically ordering and cataloguing their contents. Still, when daytime TV became too much to bear John had ample time to scan the shelves and find the album in between reading titles he knew, squinting at faded titles he didn’t know anyway and quirking an eyebrow at books in foreign languages on subjects that were frankly puzzling. It stood out, John supposed, on account of being leather but not supple and worn like the other leather clad volumes dotted about between gleaming new paper backs and gnarled lever arch binders.

He opened the stiff, creaking album to a photograph of two young boys stood side by side. It only took a moment for John to identify them with a wry smile. One, a slightly heavier set sandy haired boy was giving the camera a polite, thin lipped smile while the other, a darker haired, slight child with curiously light grey eyes, stared at the camera grimly. The two stood dressed in well cut formal clothes in what appeared to be a neat and orderly office lined with heavy mahogany furniture which John assumed had been their father’s study.

He flipped the page. He gathered this photo was taken a few years later, Sherlock having grown a good few inches and Mycroft having lost some of the plumpness from his cheeks. Disconcertingly, he noted how Sherlock’s expression was almost a carbon copy of that of the previous photo.

Having made his way through the album to the most recent shot, where Sherlock appeared to be in his late teens or early twenties, wearing a slim fit shirt and dark trousers much like he did now, John felt almost uneasy about what he had stumbled upon. After a moment’s hesitation he attempted to thumb through the pages to try and create a flip book effect. While the heavy, card-like paper of the album made the venture impossible John felt sure that, had he done so, the effect would have made Sherlock simply look like he had stood in the same spot in the study, growing vertically in different outfits without altering a muscle in his facial expression.

It was while wearing the alarmed expression this conclusion caused in John that Sherlock came into the living room from his bedroom and gave John and the album a questioning glance. The doctor opened the album and waited for Sherlock to stand by his side before going on.

“Your expression,” John punctuated his words by turning the pages of the album, “in these,” another page, “is identical.”

“I’d hope so,” Sherlock said with apparent confusion, “I am still the same person.”

“No,” John shook his head firmly, “No, I mean,” he slid the photo of Sherlock at around the age of six and Sherlock at around twenty out of the binder, “Look at this,” he wafted the older photo before the man himself, “And this. Your expression is precisely the same in these photos.”

“Does it really matter?”

“You aren’t smiling in any of these photos, you’re just staring at the camera. I bet these are the only photos that exist of you as well, aren’t they?”

The detective considered the question.

“Beyond candids Mycroft has undoubtedly had taken of me around London, yes.”

“No unfortunate photos of you on Facebook?”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed.

“Of course not.”

“No photos at family weddings?”

“If there are any photographs of me at family weddings I would assume that I look much as I do in these.”

“But you look miserable in these,” John said, realising as he spoke the words that he came close to feeling intimidated when meeting the cool stare of even a four year old Sherlock.

“I don’t, I look,” Sherlock studied the photo himself and, much to John’s despair, the man practically mirrored the expression as he did so, “neutral. I really don’t understand your excitement about this. Portrait photographs are largely useless outside of use in investigation.”

“Well they don’t need a use,” John thought as though from afar about the fact that he was defending the taking of cheesy family photographs and how he had never seen his life leading him to this particular moment, “They’re nice to look back on, to remember times in your life by.”

“I remember this photo being taken perfectly. Monday, 2 o’clock, those trousers itched. Mycroft was angry because I’d stolen his copy of Dostoevsky and-“

“Alright, alright,” the doctor snapped the album shut wearily and held it out to Sherlock, “I just think it’s a shame when you have a perfectly nice smile.”

Sherlock was left holding the album and staring silently after the doctor as he rose from his chair to make a cup of tea for them both. John turned and shot the man an amused look.

“You’re pulling that expression again.”

“Does my face now offend you?”

“No,” John disagreed and dunked a tea bag into each mug of boiling water, “It just makes me think of you age six in short trousers and it’s a bit alarming.”

*

It made John feel triumphant having a plan that Sherlock Holmes was, to the best of his knowledge, utterly unaware of. He bided his time, he picked his moment. He struck while the iron was hot and made sure to get the man off his guard.

They had just outstripped a group of prospective bank robbers and had made their way back to Baker Street to regroup and consider how best to make use of the information they had gained from their impromptu stakeout on the men in question. Their adrenaline sent them flying up the stairs at Baker Street and into the flat. They bolted the door even though there was no chance the men had followed them all the way home then crashed to a halt. John flung himself into his armchair; Sherlock fell onto the sofa ungracefully.

A moment of silence passed. Then, surreptitiously, the pair looked across at each other and burst out laughing. There was no need for either man to say what they found so funny when they had been chased by men desperately trying to pull ill-fitting balaclavas off their heads, weaving down the street after them as they peered through one eye hole or the mouth of their masks. A stitch formed in John’s side from the laughter but he still couldn’t bring himself to stop as he remembered again the sound of the men behind them bumping into each other with a resounding “oof”.

Even through his haze of breath-stealing, wheezing, verging-on-painful laughter John seized the moment. He whipped his phone out of his pocket, turned in his chair and snapped a photo of the detective who was currently slightly curled on the sofa, eyes closed tight and mouth open with peals of uncontrollable laughter. The light and the snap of the camera brought Sherlock crashing back to his senses however.

“John,” he jumped to his feet and the doctor followed suit, “John. No.”

“There is a photo Mike Stamford posted of me at university with cocks drawn on my face because I passed out drunk after a rugby match,” John said coolly, hiding the phone behind his back and edging away, “Sherlock this is a perfectly nice photo by comparison.”

“John. Give me the phone,” the doctor heard the laughter bubbling up within Sherlock’s tone once more as he stormed closer, hand held out expectantly.

“No! No, I have evidence that you can grin and I’m not giving it up Sherlock! Not a chance!”

“John, give me that phone or I will draw cocks on your face when you next come home drunk,” Sherlock said, the words practically indistinguishable through his laughter.

The fight was resolved at length by a perplexed Mrs Hudson who tore up the stairs to stand in the doorway of 221b. On the threshold she found one of her tenants snapping photos with his phone in one hand while wielding a riding crop in the other and her other tenant, the one she had always though rather more sensible, holding that damned skull out of the window in a rather grand, daring gesture. She identified the source of the howling noise she had heard from her own flat as the pair near enough sobbing with laughter as tears pricked their eyes.

*

The photographs had actually required a new album due to their sheer volume. As John flipped through the file, a cheap and scruffy red one covered with very obviously fake leather, he found himself thinking that what they had created was the physical embodiment of a Facebook folder full of photos that were better forgotten. A few shots took a great deal of study and interpretation – one was either a blurred shot of an eye or a bullet hole in the wall, another was just Sherlock’s lower jaw and ear, another had half of each of their faces swimming into view and the riding crop waving cheerfully over their heads.

“One day I will burn that album,” a far more sombre and meditative Sherlock called from his sofa. John ignored the remark and popped the file back on the bookcase.

When the detective had wandered out of the living room without a word, seeming, if the footsteps were any indication, to stride to his bedroom, John opened the other album and flipped once more through the photos inside. Sherlock got taller, his hair got longer and curled, his body thinned and his stare seemed to intensify. And then, at age twenty eight, his face flushed, his eyes screwed up tight and his teeth bared in an honest, heartfelt laugh.


End file.
